The Mute

22 | twenty-two

Ace Black

My heart is pounding. Sweat dripped down my face. The crowd's cheering (more like screaming). The ball is passed to me, I quickly shoot the ball, scoring two points for my team. Now, we're tied with our opponent—The Stallions—20 points each. It just hit halftime, so we all headed to the lockers to take a break and discuss strategies.

"Ace!" Selene yelled at me from the first row, as I went to grab my water bottle from the bench.

I looked up and saw Selene, Mel, Isaiah and Jay sitting in the first row. I was surprised to see Mel because she doesn't come to my games. Any event that's loud with a lot of people repels Mel. Even though she doesn't come to see me play, she supports me in other ways. She'll help me train, make me delicious snacks that are healthy, give me pep talks, and kisses.

"Good luck," Mel signed.

"Thank you," I signed back to her.

~~~Skipping Past Some Stuff Cause I Don't Know Anything About Sports~~~

There's ten seconds left on the clock. I glance at Mel who looks worried for me. We're one point behind, if I don't make this shot, we lose. Mason passes the ball to Tyler. Tyler catches it and immediately sends it over to me. I take a deep breath, aim, and shoot. I hear the buzzer go off when the ball hits the net.

The ball taunts me, spinning around the ring. Until it finally falls out of the ring. Just kidding! It fell in! My team and the crowd goes wild. My teammates cheer and hug each other. Coach is celebrating, doing his weird victory dance. I cheered and ran up to the first row, hugging Mel, forgetting I was extremely sweaty.

"Oh, wait I'm sweaty," I realized.

"It's fine," Mel chuckled lightly. "You did amazing!"

"It was your cheers that made me amazing," I smiled.

Mel laughed and kissed my cheek.

"I should probably go hit the showers," I chuckled.

"Probably," Mel nodded. "How about when you finish taking a shower, I take you out for victory pizza?"

"Sounds like a plan," I smiled.

I walked away from Mel, into the locker room. After I took a shower and got all situated, I made my way to the lounge, where Mel and I were meeting up to go get that pizza she promised me. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, tapping in my 6 digit password (it's MelAce aka 635223), and tapping on my messages. As I was lowering my finger to tap on Mel's name, I heard a dog barking. There is only one dog in this school, which is Percy. And Percy doesn't bark unless Mel is extremely not okay.

I ran over towards the barking and gasped at the sight I saw. Some random dude, I don't recognize, IS KISSING MEL. HE HAS HIS FILTHY HANDS WRAPPED AROUND MEL'S WAIST. HE'S HOLDING ON TO HER TIGHTLY. Mel was frozen and had tears running down her face. The worst part of all of this is that NOBODY WAS DOING ANYTHING. Some of them are yelling at him to stop, a group of guys I didn't also recognize were cheering him on.

I stormed up to them, and yanked Mel backwards away from the guy and into me, "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"

"What?" The guy asked, dumbfoundedly.

"THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND!" I screamed.

"My bad," He shrugged. "I didn't know. She didn't say anything."

"BECAUSE SHE'S A MUTE DUMBASS!" I yelled. I heard Mel gasp quietly at my profanity.

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE TALKING TO, DUMBASS?!" He yelled back.